Chapter 10: How Poverty Affects Academic Achievement: Which to Fix First? The Teachers or the Poverty? -By Lian Liu, with contributions and editing by Marcy Abong and Ileana LaGrutta Summary: The reformers’ claim is that poverty is an excuse for ineffective teaching and failing schools and they believe that the society should improving education before solve poverty. However, the claim of Ravitch is that poverty is highly correlated with low academic achievement and the society should solve the problems of education and poverty at the same time. Ravitch described a picture of the poor children’s life to emphasize that poverty affects children’s health and well-being; a depressing list of non present opportunities. An especially important point is how important poverty is before a child is born. Insufficient prenatal care leads to risk of prematurity, which increases the likelihood of physical and developmental deficiencies. The domino effect of disadvantage begins long before a child enters the classroom. Furthermore, her use of data about the rate of childhood poverty in the United States versus that of other advanced nations illustrated that the problem must be addressed in order to improve education. After that, Ravitch used examples to compare the lives of children of the poor and children of the nonpoor, i.e. “they are less likely to …” and “they are more likely to …” have certain opportunities. All in all, Ravitch believes that the reformers’ claim is backwards and delays the steps necessary to improve our education system.
This issue is important percentage of childhood poverty is very high. A crucial question in this chapter is whether we need to “fix” poverty or teachers first. Ravitch believes that poverty and segregation are the crux of all of our problems, so, not surprisingly, she asserts poverty must come first.
This issue is important in our efforts to develop a new strategic plan in Rhode Island because poverty impacts the state very much so. This can particularly be seen in the city of Central Falls. Central Falls suffers from economic disadvantages, high crime rates, and poor health care especially for pregnant mothers. That being said, as new reforms are popping up throughout the state of Rhode Island in regards to poverty and improving schools, reformers should keep these ideas in mind and realize that no real progress in student academic achievement will be made, until the issue of poverty and segregation (both issues that affect achievement even before the child enters a school building) are settled.
My reading notes：
Reformers _no sense
Highly correlated, do two at the same time
Poverty affects health and wellbeing
Most are dragged down
The rate of childhood poverty high
Poverty_before children are born_preterm birth_learning disability and many problem
Less likely to and more likely to
Conclusion
Marcy’s Additional Notes:
fixing schools before poverty -> cart before horse
Chapter 10: How Poverty Affects Academic Achievement: Which to Fix First? The Teachers or the Poverty?
-By Lian Liu, with contributions and editing by Marcy Abong and Ileana LaGrutta
Summary:
The reformers’ claim is that poverty is an excuse for ineffective teaching and failing schools and they believe that the society should improving education before solve poverty. However, the claim of Ravitch is that poverty is highly correlated with low academic achievement and the society should solve the problems of education and poverty at the same time.
Ravitch described a picture of the poor children’s life to emphasize that poverty affects children’s health and well-being; a depressing list of non present opportunities. An especially important point is how important poverty is before a child is born. Insufficient prenatal care leads to risk of prematurity, which increases the likelihood of physical and developmental deficiencies. The domino effect of disadvantage begins long before a child enters the classroom. Furthermore, her use of data about the rate of childhood poverty in the United States versus that of other advanced nations illustrated that the problem must be addressed in order to improve education. After that, Ravitch used examples to compare the lives of children of the poor and children of the nonpoor, i.e. “they are less likely to …” and “they are more likely to …” have certain opportunities. All in all, Ravitch believes that the reformers’ claim is backwards and delays the steps necessary to improve our education system.
This issue is important percentage of childhood poverty is very high. A crucial question in this chapter is whether we need to “fix” poverty or teachers first. Ravitch believes that poverty and segregation are the crux of all of our problems, so, not surprisingly, she asserts poverty must come first.
This issue is important in our efforts to develop a new strategic plan in Rhode Island because poverty impacts the state very much so. This can particularly be seen in the city of Central Falls. Central Falls suffers from economic disadvantages, high crime rates, and poor health care especially for pregnant mothers. That being said, as new reforms are popping up throughout the state of Rhode Island in regards to poverty and improving schools, reformers should keep these ideas in mind and realize that no real progress in student academic achievement will be made, until the issue of poverty and segregation (both issues that affect achievement even before the child enters a school building) are settled.
My reading notes：
Marcy’s Additional Notes: